Salary vs Cost of Living
Estimate your monthly expenses, savings, and lifestyle affordability in any of our tracked cities.
Summary
On a net income of $5000/mo in Melbourne, a single household would spend about $2925/mo, leaving $2075 in savings. This is a comfortable affordability profile.
How the calculator works
The calculator takes three inputs — city, net monthly income in USD, and household size — and returns a deterministic monthly budget with estimated rent, groceries, transport, utilities, lifestyle spending, total expenses, projected savings, and a 0-100 affordability score. Every output is derived from the underlying city dataset; there is no opinion in the numbers.
Rent estimates scale with household size: singles see the city-centre 1-bedroom benchmark, couples see roughly 1.25× that figure (reflecting demand for a slightly larger unit), and families see the city-centre 3-bedroom benchmark. Groceries scale near-linearly (×1.7 for couples, ×2.4 for families), transport sub-linearly (×1.7 and ×2.0), and utilities and lifestyle follow flat household-size brackets.
Reading the affordability score
The affordability score expresses your projected monthly savings as a percentage of income, scaled so that a 30% savings rate maps to a perfect 60-100 band. Above 60 indicates a comfortable financial profile with meaningful headroom for goals like home deposit, investments, or international travel. 30-60 is workable but tight — most discretionary spending will require active tracking. Below 30 means the income-city pairing is structurally stretched; either reduce housing costs (suburb shift or shared accommodation), raise income, or pick a cheaper city.
The score is a relative signal, not a personal recommendation. A 45/100 score in a premium global city like New York or Singapore is not unusual for an early-career professional and is rarely a reason not to take the role — but it does forecast that lifestyle compromises will be required.
Salary, cost, and the savings-rate equation
Two households with identical net incomes can have radically different long-term financial outcomes purely because of city choice. A $5,000/month net income in a city with an 80 cost index typically produces 5-10% savings rate; the same income in a city with a 55 cost index typically produces 25-35% savings rate. Compounded over a decade, the difference is on the order of a starter home deposit.
The implication is not "always pick the cheapest city". It is: when comparing offers across cities, run the take-home figure through our calculator before evaluating the headline salary. A 25% higher gross offer in a much more expensive city can produce identical or worse monthly savings.
Limits and assumptions
The calculator assumes mid-range lifestyle norms for the chosen household size. Heavy travellers, frequent diners-out, families with private school fees, and households supporting dependants in other countries will see budgets shift meaningfully versus our defaults. Use the output as a base case and add or subtract for your specifics.
Tax is excluded — input net income (post-tax) for accurate results. Currency is USD for cross-city comparability; if your gross income is in another currency, convert at the prevailing exchange rate and discount for income tax in the destination country.